Authentication & Authorization in REST APIs

Authentication & Authorization in REST APIs

Types of Authentication:

1️⃣ Session Authentication

2️⃣ Token Authentication

3️⃣ JWT Authentication

Popular library for JWT:

Simple JWT

JWT Flow:

  1. User logs in

  2. Server sends token

  3. Client sends token in header

  4. Server validates token

REST API Security Best Practices

  • Always use HTTPS

  • Validate input

  • Use rate limiting

  • Implement CORS properly

  • Use authentication tokens

  • Avoid exposing sensitive data

Security is very important for production APIs.

Pagination, Filtering & Searching

In Django REST Framework:

  • PageNumberPagination

  • LimitOffsetPagination

  • SearchFilter

  • OrderingFilter

Example:

from rest_framework.filters import SearchFilter

class UserViewSet(viewsets.ModelViewSet):
    filter_backends = [SearchFilter]
    search_fields = ['username']

API Testing
Tools:
  • Postman
  • Swagger
Automated Testing Example
from rest_framework.test import APITestCase

class UserAPITest(APITestCase):
    def test_create_user(self):
        data = {"username": "bency"}
        response = self.client.post("/users/", data)
        self.assertEqual(response.status_code, 201)
Scaling REST APIs in Production
For real-world production:
🔹 Use Redis for caching
🔹 Use Celery for background tasks
🔹 Use Docker for containerization
🔹 Use Nginx + Gunicorn
🔹 Add DB indexing
🔹 Horizontal scaling
If you master:
  • REST principles
  • HTTP fundamentals
  • Django REST Framework
  • Authentication
  • Performance & scaling
You are production-ready

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